


Until My Heart Explodes

by todxrxki



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, kuroo and kenma are dating and kuroo doesn't realize it, kuroo is a fool, kuroo tetsurou wins the award for most oblivious person in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 03:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20001880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todxrxki/pseuds/todxrxki
Summary: Kuroo Tetsurou likes to think he’s a smart guy most of the time. He gets top scores in all of his exams without exerting a ton of effort, and although his strategic mind doesn’t match Kenma’s when it comes to volleyball, he’s not terribly far behind. He’s also able to figure out the best ways to get under people’s skin, which he thinks is a particular type of smarts. However, he’s coming to figure out that when it comes to certain things, he might as well be the most oblivious person on the face of the planet. / Kuroo and Kenma are dating, and Kuroo just might be the last person to realize it.





	Until My Heart Explodes

Kuroo Tetsurou likes to think he’s a smart guy most of the time. He gets top scores in all of his exams without exerting a ton of effort, and although his strategic mind doesn’t match Kenma’s when it comes to volleyball, he’s not terribly far behind. He’s also able to figure out the best ways to get under people’s skin, which he thinks is a particular type of smarts. 

However, he’s coming to figure out that when it comes to certain things, he might as well be the most oblivious person on the face of the planet.

It all starts on a Sunday. He’s lying on his bed, tossing a volleyball and up and down with one of his hands and cupping his phone with the other. The phone rings once, twice, three times, and then finally the person on the other end picks up. “What, Kuro.”

“Aw, what a way to greet your best friend,” Kuroo complains teasingly. “You know most people start out their conversations with  _ hi, hello, how are you _ -”

“I don’t like phone calls,” Kenma states matter-of-factly.

“Ha. Yeah, I know,” Kuroo says. “But I knew you’d take forever to reply if I texted you, so forgive me, oh great one. Anyways, I gotta go shopping. You’re coming with me. Be ready in half an hour.”

Kenma pauses, probably trying to process what Kuroo’s just said. Then he sighs. “What if I have plans?”

The good thing about having known Kenma for most of his life is that he knows how Kenma will react to almost everything. He knows that if Kenma actually had plans, or didn’t want to go for whatever reason, Kenma would tell him he had something to do. If Kenma actually didn’t want to go, Kuroo would leave him alone about it, and Kenma knows that. This means that Kenma’s reaction today is just him being difficult, as he so loves to do with Kuroo. Kuroo can’t help but smile. “You don’t.”

“Do too,” Kenma says, because Kenma thrives on making his life just the slightest bit harder.

“Do not,” Kuroo argues back.

“Do too.”

“Oh yeah? What exactly are your plans then?”

Kenma sighs dramatically into the phone. “Fine. I’ll see you in half an hour,” he says before he hangs up.

Kenma shows up in a nice pair of jeans and a hoodie that looks fresh. For Kenma, who thrives in days old hoodies and sweatpants, it’s a surprisingly nice outfit. Kuroo feels his traitorous heart skip a beat. 

He’s known for a long time that, objectively, his best friend Kozume Kenma is good-looking. His hair frames his face perfectly, displaying a pair of bright golden eyes. His skin is smooth, somehow, despite the fact that Kuroo’s pretty sure Kenma doesn’t practice proper skincare routines. His nose is adorable, tiny and perky, even cuter when Kenma wrinkles up his nose at something he doesn’t like - which is too often, really. But he tries not to think about what that means for him, specifically. 

“Let’s get this over with,” Kenma grumbles. 

“Kenma,” Kuroo whines, slinging an arm around Kenma’s shoulders. “You’re not looking forward to spending time with your favorite person?”

“Huh. I didn’t know that the god of game development Kojima was going to be coming along.” 

“You wound me,” Kuroo exclaims dramatically. Kenma just rolls his eyes and buries his head into his phone to play one of his mobile games that Kuroo’s all but convinced he’ll never be able to understand. Kuroo keeps his arm firmly around Kenma’s shoulders, pulling him along so that Kenma won’t be able to get separated from him. He asks Kenma’s opinion on a variety of shoes. Most of Kenma’s answers, as always, are non-committal at best, but finally when he comes across a pair of sleek red, white and black shoes, Kenma’s eyes flicker for a second.

“They’d match your uniform,” Kenma says after a second.

“You like them,” Kuroo says, immediately doing mental calculations in his head to figure out if he has enough to buy them.

“I didn’t say that.”

Kuroo snorts. “But you do.” Kenma’s too obvious sometimes, and Kuroo has to wonder if he realizes it. 

“They’re not bad,” Kenma hedges. “It’s nice that you rely so much on my opinion, I guess, anyways.”

Kuroo wonders if it’s normal that Kenma’s opinion tends to be the main one he relies on. He decides he doesn’t care too much even if it’s not normal, anyways. He buys the red and black sneakers.

.

When he gets home that night, though, his phone lights up with a text. It’s one of Bokuto’s all-caps extravaganzas:  _ BRO A GIRL JUST CONFESSED TO ME WHAT DO I DO.  _

Kuroo rolls his eyes.  _ Bro you either say yes or no. It shouldn’t be difficult. _

_ BUT WHAT IF MY ANSWER IS I DON’T KNOW _ , comes Bokuto’s response.  _ HOW DID YOU KNOW YOU WANTED TO START DATING.  _

Kuroo stares at the phone for a good few minutes, unsure as to what he’s reading. How did he know he wanted to start dating? It doesn’t make any sense. Kuroo hasn’t dated anyone since a girl in his class back in like, second year of middle school, and that had lasted barely a week. He’s spent most of his time dodging confessions since then. And it’s not like he’s dating anyone now. That’s something a person would know about themselves, Kuroo’s sure.

_ I’m not dating anyone,  _ Kuroo replies.  _ Idk why you’d think that. _

_ OH WELL SORRY I GUESS I WAS WRONG,  _ Bokuto says.  _ MAYBE ILL ASK SOMEONE ELSE FOR ADVICE BUT IDK ANYONE ELSE WHOS DATING SOMEONE. _

Anyone  _ else _ ? 

There’s a part of Kuroo who’s dying to know exactly who Bokuto thought he was dating, but there’s a larger part of him that finds the idea completely terrifying for some reason. So instead of asking, he buries his head into his pillow and tries to come up with the answer for himself.

As far as girls go, his options are limited there. Nekoma doesn’t have any managers at the moment. He interacts with the captain of the girls’ team occasionally to ask for tips and strategies, but despite the fact that she seems like a complete badass, his interactions with her are limited to just that. And Bokuto’s never met any of the girls in Kuroo’s class or outside of the team for various reasons. Lev’s sister Alisa comes to the matches occasionally, and Kuroo has a bit of a minor aesthetically based crush on her, but he’s pretty sure that not even Bokuto would believe that goddess Haiba Alisa would date someone like Kuroo.

So it has to be a guy, then.

Kuroo’s always known he’s not completely straight, but he’s never been sure exactly how obvious that is to the rest of the world. He thinks about the members of his team: none of the first years, of course; he treats them as though they were his own sons. He feels like he’s scolding Yamamoto more often than not. Fukunaga is funny, but they rarely talk outside of matches. He doesn’t interact with Kai a significant amount, either. And he and Yaku argue and shit, but he doesn’t think it’s enough to get Bokuto to suspect any form of romance between the two of them. So that leaves....

_ No.  _ Kuroo clenches his hands into fists. There has to be someone else, someone on another team, right? But the Karasuno boys tend to be too much for Kuroo, terrified of Kuroo, or to some degree, hate Kuroo’s guts. He only interacts with Bokuto and Akaashi from Fukurodani, and Akaashi has a thing for Bokuto, Kuroo imagines. He’d rather swim in a vat of flesh-eating bacteria than ever date Daishou. God, who else, who else…

There is no way that Bokuto is under the impression that he’s dating Kenma.

But thinking back on it, Kenma is who he spends most of his time with. He tends to be more physically affectionate with Kenma than with anyone else, just because he has to put his arms on Kenma to guide him and Kenma’s hair is just too easy to ruffle, obviously. And it’s not like he’d be opposed to dating Kenma, but…

_ Nope.  _ Kuroo ends that train of thought then and there. It’s too dangerous. Bokuto must have been completely delusional and referring to someone that Kuroo had ruled out, because this theory just makes no sense whatsoever.

Kuroo sleeps restlessly that night.

.

The next morning, Kuroo meets Kenma, as he always does, to walk to school together. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” Kuroo teases, jamming a gentle elbow into Kenma’s ribs. Absently, he wonders if the action could be construed as flirtatious, and then begs his traitorous brain to  _ shut the fuck up already.  _

“I wish mornings didn’t exist,” Kenma grumbles into his PSP, as he usually does. It’s a normal day, then. Nothing abnormal about the day at all.

“The morning is the best time to get in some extra practice,” Kuroo says. He tries to place his hand on Kenma’s shoulder today, but that feels like an old man steering his grandchild, so he moves his arm back to rest across Kenma’s shoulders. And then, without even thinking about it, he blurts, “So Bokuto texted me yesterday.”

“Yeah, and Shouyou texted me,” Kenma says. “Those two love to spam us with texts. What about it?”

“He said a girl confessed to him, and he didn’t know what to do about it.”

“Let her down, obviously,” Kenma says. 

“Yeah, of course.” Kuroo pauses, and then says, “But it got me wondering. Have you ever been confessed to?”

He hates that he feels slightly nervous, waiting for Kenma’s response. But he wants to know. He’s realized they don’t talk about romance ever, mostly because, well, Kuroo has nothing to say, and he’s always imagined Kenma had nothing to say either. But now he’s suddenly nervous that Kenma does and just hadn’t told him. And it turns out his suspicions are slightly correct.

Kenma breathes in slowly, then breathes out. “Why are you asking this?”

“I’m just curious,” Kuroo says, giving Kenma’s shoulder a slight squeeze. “Why, is it a secret? I didn’t think we had those at this point.”

“No, it’s not a secret.” Kenma jabs the pause button on his game and stares up at Kuroo, those intense golden eyes piercing into his. “Yes. A girl confessed to me recently after she heard we were going to Nationals and I was a starter on the team. But only because of that.”

“You don’t know that,” Kuroo objects.

“Yes, I do,” Kenma says, like it’s a fact. “There’s no other reason.”

“Your good looks? Your sense of humor? Your strategic abilities? Your ability to beat a game that’s supposed to take months in a matter of days?”

“You might be the only one who finds that last one appealing,” Kenma mutters under his breath, glancing away. Well, at least Kuroo thinks that’s what he hears, but that doesn’t make any sense.

He doesn’t question it, though, because there’s another, more pressing question on his mind. “Well, what did you say to her?”

Kenma jerks like he’s been stung, but it doesn’t show in his flat expression as he looks back up at Kuroo. “What do you think I said?”

“Well, I’d wager no, because I’d hope you would’ve told me,” Kuroo says.

This causes Kenma to look even more confused. Kuroo starts to wonder if there might be something he’s missing in this conversation. “Of course I told her no,” Kenma mumbles, though, turning back to his game and pressing the button to start it back up. “Any more crazy questions?”

“Do you think that cereal is soup?”

“I… no, Kuro. No, I don’t.”

.

Kuroo always observes every single player on his team. It’s the duty of a captain, after all. He has to make sure that all of his players are playing up to their best potential. So it’s not weird at all when he notices within a couple of minutes that Kenma’s a little more sluggish and seems to be a little more sweaty than he usually is.

During their first water break, Kuroo confronts him. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Kenma says, but it’s slightly slurred. “I’ll be ‘kay. We have Nationals soon, and I ‘ave to beat ‘arasuno.”

Kuroo sighs and presses his hand against Kenma’s forehead, which, of course, is burning up.  _ God.  _ “You’re not gonna be able to beat Karasuno if you’re hauled up in the hospital from playing while sick,” Kuroo complains. “C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

“You can’t miss practice,” Kenma says.

“As invaluable as my presence is, I’m sure the team can survive a single practice without me,” Kuroo tells him, tucking a piece of Kenma’s hair that’s fallen in front of his face. “Let me just go let Coach know.”

Kuroo supports most of Kenma’s weight on the way home. Kenma leans into his side even more than usual, slightly shivering, the feel of his skin clammy where it brushes Kuroo’s. Kuroo drapes his jacket around Kenma’s shoulders, but it doesn’t stop the shaking. Kuroo’s heart beats a little faster. God, he hates to see Kenma like this, especially as a result of volleyball, which Kuroo had all but dragged him into.

Once they make it to Kenma’s house, Kuroo scoops Kenma up into his arms. He knows Kenma’s pretty sick, because Kenma doesn’t speak a word of protest, just clings to Kuroo until Kuroo puts him down in his bed. “I’m gonna go make some soup,” he says, reverently brushing one of Kenma’s cheeks. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Five minutes,” Kenma mumbles, sounding disoriented. 

He stays with Kenma for as long as he can, until the sun sets and Kenma’s parents tell him they’ll take it from there, but thank him for sitting with Kenma for so long. Kuroo reluctantly agrees. He presses a light kiss to Kenma’s forehead before he bids him goodbye, and he doesn’t miss the way that both of Kenma’s parents exchange knowing looks.  _ Huh,  _ Kuroo wonders, and then…

Oh.  _ Oh. Holy fucking shit. _

Has Kuroo been dating Kenma this entire time?!

Everything starts to fall into place. Kenma’s ‘fancy’ outfit for their outing. The fact that Kuroo relies mostly on Kenma’s opinion on his decisions, and the fact that Kenma doesn’t mind it. Bokuto thinking that Kuroo was dating someone --  _ Kenma.  _ Kenma reacting so oddly to Kuroo asking about his response to the girl’s confession. How affectionate he’s always been with Kenma, and no one else.

Kuroo Tetsurou might be generally a pretty smart guy, but right now he feels as though he’s basically just the world’s biggest idiot.

.

He goes back over to Kenma’s before school the next day, to check on him but also to talk to him, to work out what’s actually been going on. Throughout the course of his life, Kenma’s always been the one person he could talk to about anything. He’s not about to let that change now. 

He practically runs up to Kenma’s room, only giving Kenma’s parents a slight wave before he darts up the stairs. Once he gets there, he pauses for a second at the door before he walks in. It’s just Kenma, he tells himself. Kenma who he’s known his entire life, practically.

Kenma who he’s apparently been dating for who knows how long and he just now realized.

He sits down on the corner of Kenma’s bed, gently shaking Kenma awake. Kenma frowns at him. “W...wha’? Kuro?”

“Hey, kitten,” Kuroo says in a low, comforting voice. “Just wanted to drop by before school. How are you feeling?”

“A little bit better,” Kenma says. “I should be fine by tomorrow’s practice, I think.”

“Good, good. Don’t spend all day playing video games. Get some rest,” Kuroo chides lightly. He grabs Kenma’s hand then to hold on for comfort as he gears up himself for the next question. Kenma’s fingers slide easily through his, and he scolds himself, because  _ how had he missed this, exactly?  _ “Uh, question.”

“Just say it,” Kenma mumbles, looking tired.

“Are we… are we dating?”

Kenma’s eyes widen all of a sudden. His eyebrows shoot up, and he stays in that position for a good half a minute, looking completely shell-shocked. Then his face starts to soften, his eyes closing a little bit as his body shakes. Kuroo’s scared for a second that he might be crying before he realizes that he’s  _ laughing,  _ the little shit.

When Kenma finally pulls himself together, he says, “So that’s what this all has been about,” in a thoughtful manner, and then, “Oh my god, how did you not know?”

“How exactly was I supposed to know!” Kuroo whines, flopping over to bury his head into Kenma’s shoulder. “We never said it out loud!”

“Most of our conversations aren’t verbal.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly notice! You always tend to be one step ahead of me.”

“We go on dates every weekend. We’re literally holding hands right now.”

“Kenmaaaa,” Kuroo groans into Kenma’s shoulder, feeling the laughter start to bubble out of him as well. “It’s not like we ever, y’know, kissed or anything!” 

“You’ve always been the chivalrous type,” Kenma muses, though he’s stroking Kuroo’s hair in a way that’s almost comforting. “I wasn’t going to rush you into anything.”

“So kind,” Kuroo says sarcastically. 

“Well, now that you’re caught up,” Kenma says, another laugh coloring his sentence, “do you want to break up?”

“Huh? Hell no,” Kuroo says vehemently. He shoots back up to cup Kenma’s face in his hands, hoping to express the severity of his emotions in his expression. “Now that I know we’re actually dating, I’m prepared to be the world’s best boyfriend. Like, the best one fucking  _ ever _ .”

Kenma blushes and looks away. Kuroo’s about to ask why when he hears a low, quiet, “You already were.”

“Huh?” Kuroo asks, lifting a hand to cup his ear. “Can you repeat that? I think I missed it.”

“I’m not repeating it.”

Kuroo laughs again, nuzzling his head to the top of Kenma’s and then leaving a gentle kiss to the top of his head. He pulls back to look into Kenma’s eyes. “Well, now that we’ve been dating for - what? A month?”

“Three, actually.”

“ _ Three months  _ \- and you thought I wouldn’t celebrate our every month’s anniversary!?”

“I’d hoped.”

“Anyways, now that we’ve been dating for three months, I think that it’s high time we have our first kiss,” Kuroo says, his voice going soft at the end. “That is, if you’re okay with it.”

“I’m gonna get you sick,” Kenma warns, wrinkling up his nose - and it’s even cuter than Kuroo remembered. His heart skips a beat out of pure affection.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Kuroo murmurs, and when Kenma gives him a nod of consent, he leans in to kiss Kenma for the first time. His heart sings when he makes contact, and, well, shit. This is what he’d been missing out on. This is what he’d told himself he could never have. This is everything he’d secretly been wanting. 

He smiles to himself as he pulls back, kissing Kenma’s forehead again. “Good?” he whispers.

“Great,” Kenma mutters, and coming from Kenma, it’s the highest of praises.

“Get some rest,” Kuroo says gently. “I’ll be back after school. With three anniversary cards.”

“We really don’t have to celebrate every single month,” Kenma protests weakly. 

“We don’t have to, but I want to,” Kuroo says. “Now go to sleep. I’ll see you soon.” 

He stalls for a minute in the doorway, watching as Kenma slowly drifts back off to sleep, his features peaceful and angelic in sleep. His entire chest feels warm.  _ Huh,  _ he thinks to himself as he stands there.  _ I definitely could have chosen a worse person to accidentally date. Worse than the person I’m apparently completely head over heels in love with.  _

He’s a good thirty minutes late to school that day, and he ends up with a fever two days later, but whatever. It’s totally worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading!  
> This was loosely inspired by "pretty girls make me nervous" by ebenroot, but mostly just the idea of Kuroo not knowing that they're dating. I tried to put my own twist on it from there! Also, I wrote this in one day and didn't edit too much, so don't judge too harshly :')  
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
